New York City is one of the most unequal places in the entire country when you look at wage and income disparities.

New Yorkers in need of high-quality, long-term employment, need levels of training to access jobs at tech companies. This includes those working in low-wage fields, receiving public assistance, or unemployed.

This rising income inequality has created massive gaps in the population. With Gentrification impacting housing costs and displacing black, Latino and immigrant communities; we are now realizing how gentrification is also impacting communities opportunities to access workforce development and employment.

Low-income New Yorkers have long been denied job opportunities, while public and private money flows into their communities strengthening inequality and displacement, local workers rarely see a return from these multi-million dollar public investments.

To prevent the next chapter in New York’s ‘tale of two cities,’ Mayor de Blasio must invest in training, education, and union apprenticeship programs that lead to good paying, permanent jobs with a real pathway to the middle class for New York’s low-income communities of color that are struggling with the highest rates of unemployment.